Download The Volunteer Party Platform

One Family, Many Voices

Our primary mission is to ensure that all
citizens are heard, no matter how distasteful we may find
their message. Missouri is a special place, with a people as diverse as
its land. That diversity should give rise to many points of view, many
ideas.

Unfortunately, Missouri has been dominated instead by a
pair of selfish voices struggling for power. They have drowned out all
others. They have created artificial "sides" which push people together
for very little gain, and pull them apart at a terrible cost.

It's time for an end to the Two Party System.

We believe that Missouri is a land of many
voices. As such, every voice should be given its due.
Political leaders should be able to speak without having to compromise
their principles. They should be
able to disagree, rather than forced to conform.

At the same time, we believe that Missouri is a political
family. This means that we should not seek to use our
disagreements as an excuse to stop talking or listening to each other.
Rather, disagreements are all the more reason that we should find the
areas where we do agree. Common ground,
not compromise, is what keeps a family healthy and prosperous.

Our Vision

As Volunteers, we seek to empower ourselves and each
other. Our goals are:

To support communities and individuals.
We should have a voice in our education, trade, voting, and taxes.
Regulations should
come from the ground up, not the top down.

To remove self-serving institutions.
Political parties and government bureaucracy have shut people out of
the political process. They have created
unequal representation in our legislature. This makes a
mockery of voting.

To investigate local government. Allow
greater access to public records and support individual queries. Deeper
audits, more often, would prevent the yearly
multi-million dollar theft of public money by corrupt school
and city officials.

To protect citizens' privacy and oppose government
secrecy. It should be a crime for a
public agency to collect and share a citizen's information with private
firms. It should be a crime for a public official
to destroy public documents, or deny a citizen's right to see them.
Currently, these acts can only
be addressed by lawsuit, and have very weak punishements.

To ensure that general laws only restrict harm to
others.
There are too many laws. Many of them limit how
people can learn, build, work, play, produce, trade, worship, stay
healthy, and
so forth. Not only
is this arrogant and tyrannical, it creates an overly-complicated,
over-burdened legal system.

The Plan

There are many ways to accomplish our goals, and we
encourage local
initiative. However, our political system also needs major reform at
the state level. Therefore we propose to:

Organize a political group called
the Volunteer Party.

Support candidates for all 180
legislative seats open for election in 2016.

Contest the executive offices of
Missouri Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, State
Treasurer and Attorney General in the 2016 election.

Inform voters with non-partisan
briefs on all incumbents, candidates and special interests.

Encourage participation by
providing help with absentee ballots, voter registration, and
opportunities for community service.

About the Issues

The major political parties use "issues" to divide and conquer their
opposition. Media plays its part, creating controversy to make profit.

For us, there is only one real issue:

Ordinary people have no voice.

It doesn't matter what we think about any other issue,
if we have no voice in our government. That is why we should be united
in our opposition to the two-party system. Until a better, more open
system is in place, this must take priority.

We realize that many people want to hear about other issues,
like abortion or health care. Again, we believe these topics distract
us from the basic flaws and bad behavior of our government.

We can catalog the problems that we see in different areas,
and suggest solutions, but even these solutions are at best temporary
unless
we change the system of government that created them in the
first place.

Elections - Election days should be state
holidays to allow equal access to the polls. State and local government
should consider alternatives to the current voting system, like ranking
candidates, and other preferential voting systems.

Education - Common Core and No Child Left Behind
only boost corporate profits. Federal
meddling isn't worth the 5%-10% of funds that
Missouri schools gain. Many school administrators are grossly
overpaid, including state administrators (DESE). We
propose to cut administrator numbers and salaries so that Missouri may
refuse federal funds and do what is best for its youth.

Taxes - Homeschool and private-school families
shouldn't be taxed for public school. Citizens need more
choice in how they are taxed and how it
is spent.

Pensions - State pensions should be funded with
low-risk assets, instead of volatile stocks. A pension is a promise,
not a gamble. Bailouts are no substitute for sound financial planning.

Bureaucracy - There should be fewer
rules, staff, and administrators in executive
government. Executive pay shouldn't be more than twice the salary of
the average state worker. Public records should be easier to access and
read.

The Legal System - Laws should be reduced to a
fixed, easily understood number and length. 30,000+ state laws is too
many. The prison system is overpopulated and ineffective. Local
government shouldn't use fines - like traffic fines - to gain
general revenue.